Journey to Self
by Zaraethian Empress
Summary: When one thought of Naruto, they saw a dimwitted likeable idiot that didn't have any ambition except becoming the Hokage. But really he was so very inconsistent. One moment an idiot, the next a genius, then the following an clueless fool. Really he made one's head spin.
1. Prologue

Obstinacy. That word reminded me of someone, the one who never gave up, who never gave in, who always kept his promises, who always came through, who gave his everything to help anyone he thought deserving of help. Ugh, just thinking about him was enough to give someone a complex.

Naruto. I missed him so very much. But thinking about him, always reminded me why thinking about him was such a bad idea. It was not Naruto's fault that he was so mind boggling. I mean when you first meet him, there are only two reactions I've seen everyone have. They either find him cute or they find him utterly obnoxious. It was mostly the latter. Though I can't for the life of me understand how everyone can be so blind. They never seem to notice the things about him that make no sense. Like how did he always emerge from every impossible situation he's ever been in alive. Especially when they all seem to think of him as an idiot. An extremely dim-witted idiot who they are surprised that he managed to survive to his current age.

How has no one thought beyond that, how they never seem to look beneath the surface, I cannot fathom. I mean, sure some of it could be luck, some of it could be sheer doggedness, but what about the rest of it. How did he manage to do the remainder of the things he did, without dying even with help. How does he do it? What makes him tick? No really, what went inside his head?

His stubbornness can only explain some of it. People helping him covers a little more of it, but what about the rest? I want to know who Naruto really is, not what he appears like, nor who everybody seems to think he is, but who actually is.

This is why I don't like thinking about him, he is a conundrum within a quandary within a paradox. Just trying to separate the individual threads, makes me end up making outrageous assumptions that when I look back at, I end up wondering what was I even thinking about, and how the hell did I end up making a conclusion of that sort.

See I have read his files. From his orphanage and pre-academy reports, his shinobi academy reports to his Jounin's evaluation reports. On the surface it looks like the report everyone who knew of Naruto, would look like. But when I looked at the reports together, some things stood out. Little things, like him being good at something, at some point and then him being abyssal at the same thing next week. I didn't notice it at the time, because they were a lot. But things stood out, every time I would look at the new reports, those things were like tiny little flags, that nagged at the back of my head, until I gave and looked. Then one day I saw him having excellent chakra control, then the next when I saw him he had atrocious control. How could that be, chakra control, once learnt, the body automatically adapts, it can't be unlearnt. Muscle memory could be trained to react differently, but even that would take months, a few weeks at the least. Chakra control wasn't like that. It was difficult, almost neigh impossible to have such chameleon chakra control.

Thats when I started looking at him more closely, when I started trying to understand him. How could he possibly do that. It was physically impossible. His academy reports finally made sense. It was all over the place at the first look. But if you looked at it. The results always had the lowest possible score that was required to qualify as to pass. No matter who was evaluating, what type of evaluation went on, or when the evaluations were conducted.

They all showed the exact same percentile of results. Now a few times i could understand, it could have been a coincidence but every time getting the same results, implied that he understood how the scoring went and chose to get the least possible score. But according to the reports, he barely attended the classes, so how could he figure out how a person would score, when he wasn't even present. And when he wasn't playing pranks, what was he doing when not attending classes. The chunins and jounins chasing him rarely if ever caught him, that many high level ninja not catching him spoke his of stamina and stealth. Especially in his bright, kill me now orange clothes.

Like I said a conundrum. Then on his first C-rank mission, his superior states that it was his idea that ended up turning the fight in his favour. So could an idiot really come up with ideas or plans that almost always ended up in his teams favour. The odds of that are astronomical. So only thing I could come up with after a lot of head pounding and hair pulling moments of slight insanity inducing thinking was, his entire life was his greatest prank on everyone.

That he had been playing people since he learnt how to talk. Just how was it that no one ever called him on any of it? Not even his teammates? How was that the people closest to him, people who spent everyday around him didn't look closely and wonder how he did it, without dismissing it as luck or some such thing. Especially when his teammates were lauded as genii of their class and his team leader was the youngest shinobi in the entire history of Konoha to be made jounin.

It made no sense. Was it something about him, his pheromones or something that messed with people's thinking or his chakra, like his mom's was special, that effected how everyone looked at him. Because otherwise nothing made sense. So thinking I reached for the bottle of sake under my desk. Seeing my reflection in the glass. I frowned at the bags under my eyes and limp way my blonde hair was hanging in its customary two tails. That Gaki was giving her more wrinkles.


	2. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: Me no own Naruto.

This story is just a by-product of obsessing with Naruto created by Kishimoto-sensei. Making no profit out of this.

Naruto wondered what he had done in his previous life that he was undergoing this mission. It was like it had come of out of hell, fully formed and had chosen him as its particular victim. Just why did he volunteer to do some D-rank mission, just why? He wailed and moaned and groaned internally, as he stared balefully at the stack of sacks that filled the cavernous room that stretched as far as he could see. Those sacks contained clothes, from the hospital that needed to be washed and sterilised. But before that he had to segregate the them into pile of sacks that needed sterilisation or just washing because someone at the hospital had been rushed so they were all unlabelled.

This is what he got for asking that evil spawn of hell who called herself Godaime Hokage, for some missions so that he could earn some easy cash. Since this mission would be classified as B-rank just for the sheer amount of work, so he would get that pay. But the clincher was that he had to get it done by tomorrow noon, on the dot, and it was already past seven in the evening. The worst part was not the work, he was used to that. It was that he had a mission with his team the next evening and it was a C-rank so he would get no rest before he had to leave for it, since it meant travel outside of Konoha. Damn it!

He groaned out loud, crumbling with his misery onto his knees as he bemoaned his fate. Damn those evil females for getting him into this. Steeling his resolve, he picked himself up, trying to boost his morale by saying out loud with false cheer, " Yosh! I can do this, no problem, piece of cake", the customary look of the village idiot on his face. Never could be too careful in a ninja village.

A few minutes later, he realised why that she-spawn had smiled so maliciously as she had handed him the mission scroll. . . .Clones. He let out a wail of pure misery inside his head as he stared at the dismal number of clones before him, he needed at least a fifty and he had only twelve or so. Why? Why was this happening? Then he realised that a few seals were glowing around the room. He slapped his face, as he realised that in the basement of the hospital, obviously only so much chakra could be allowed. Why did the hag have to be so paranoid? Wasn't this a little over the top for a basement?

He wasted a few more minutes, thinking and brooding. When he realised that he could just make more clones. So he moulded chakra for ten clones, they popped into existence only for half of the previous clones to pop out. Breathing carefully to restrain his fraying temper, he sent out the existing clones, then moulded chakra for twenty clones, they popped into existence silently. He then gestured for the remaining clones to enter the room again. They slowly walked in, expecting to be popped. When they didn't, they perked up and walked up to the original waiting for instructions with expectant looks on their faces, well his face multiple times. It felt so weird sometimes looking at his own face like that. Shaking his head, he set half of them working to segregate the sacks, a few to understand the sterilisation process and how to sterilise various objects. The remaining he had start washing the normal washing by switching on the huge washing machines separating the whites and the nonwhites. He figured washing whites first would prevent them from being stained.

Four hours later, he alongside his tired clones, had finished washing and drying all the whites, but he stared at the remaining piles with something akin to despair. He had a few clones henge as different people to deliver the cleaned white clothes and linens. Bucking his dwindling patience up, he plunged back into the remaining stuff to be cleaned. He created more clones to replace the one he had lost to exhaustion and various accidents that had him cringing even as he remembered them. Bolstering his resolve once more, he dived into the work, him and his long suffering clones. He just knew that the smell of this place would haunt him for a long time to come.

After what felt like eternity, but he knew realistically were only nine hours he was DONE. With all the sacks and he had packed them all as described in the information packet. When he checked the mission scroll again to see if anything remained to be done, he saw that hospital had demanded three teams of chunins for the mission. So the she-spawn had been playing him for a fool. She would have to pay at least two A-rank missions to pay all of the chunins. And she was going to only pay him a measly B-rank pay. Oh hell no. She would pay him what he deserved. Even if he had to con it out of her. His pranking days were not over, they were just on hold. That Old Hag would get what was coming to her. The smirk playing around his mouth would have evoked shudders of fear had the chunin pursuers of his childhood pranks seen it.

But first things first, he needed to deliver them, moving out of the room he spammed a hundred clones and had them go into the room in batches, pack up the stuff and then go for delivery after henge'ing into the same guys as before. Setting them this task he headed home for a quick shower. Thats when he realised that he smelled like hospital's bed pan. His team captain's nose was sharp, so he sterilised himself to prevent them from asking him unnecessary questions, then went home for a shower and change of clothes as he had only two hours before his mission and he really needed to eat. His stomach was eating itself up from the hunger.

A sudden idea made him pause. He created a clone and then popped it. Suddenly he felt better about this whole fiasco. Whistling as he reached home, he showered and changed in a happy mood. Quickly packing his things for the mission into the seals on the underside of his belt, he then packed his bag with the things expected from him as a genin (well he really meant his reputation as a village idiot), it wouldn't do for them to catch on. Now downright cheerful as he chuckled to himself he grabbed his pack and set off to Ichiraku's for a farewell meal. He after all, he had fared really well in the scut that Hag had given him. He deserved a treat.

Two hours later, he was the first one to arrive at the Mission office in the Hokage Tower. So he waited outside the room for the remaining members to come so they could get the mission parameters. Leaning against the wall, he slipped into a meditative state while still being aware of his surroundings, but were people to look at him, he would look asleep to them. It wouldn't do for the fool to be so alert now, would it. Meditating would fuel his dwindling vestiges of his physical reserves. So he cast aside his concerns, slipped further into his trance to recoup his energy.

Just as he could feel his energy reach a little below his normal levels, he felt Kakashi arrive outside the building then perch on the roof, probably settling down to read his porn. He slipped out of his meditation gently, tamping down on his spiritual presence enough to seem asleep. His sensei was good at reading chakra, so he made certain to always remain below his radar. She had pounded that lesson into his head. No one who hadn't earned his complete trust, not even her should cause him to let his guard down, no matter the location or how secure the place seemed. Not that the mission office was particularly secure. The Sandaime used to bemoan him his pranks, when he had used the multiple security loopholes to his advantage. Realistically, he knew a few were left open to periodically test the allegiances of the ninja, but some were so blatantly foolish to leave open, even for checking the loyalty of the nin.

A few minutes later all of them were there, except the pervert who was outside wondering how long it would take for his cute little genin to notice him. They waited for ten minutes more, before Sakura started getting annoyed. A few minutes after that, a vein started ticking on Sasuke's forehead. But Naruto kept peacefully sleeping. Smart boy. Deciding that he had them waiting long enough, he popped out in front of them. Bracing for the explosion of voices that would greet him. Only one voice screeched at him. Looking at the other, he found him curled up sleeping. Hmmm. This would bear looking into. So spouting a stupid lie for being late, he nudged Naruto and led them into the mission office. They had a babysi- I mean a C-rank mission to go on. He had promised, if he got entertainment out of it, well that was only a bonus.


End file.
